Summer is Over Count Down is now Unavoidable

3 more days of summer.

Ah, half of me can't wait, and half of me is cringing. Part of me is loving the time with the kids, part of me is about to snap! Excited to go back to school, skerd too! (Caitlin's spelling). That reminds me I need to email Emma Roberts Caitlin's note asking for more information about how to handle a new school.

Curse you, Harry Potter!

You know, time is dwindling quickly, and I foolishly started reading Harry Potter, Order of the Pheonix, and now I can't put it down, I have tons of stuff to do, my husband is sneering at me, and I'm only on page 521! I'm all groggy from staying up half the night. . . . I think I'm in a panic about not being able to read anything fun for the next 2 years. Oh, my Regis acceptance letter came - finally! So I need to get as organized as possible to try to save my sanity as August 27th approaches.

Park View Swim Meet

Caitlin wanted to swim in the meet yesterday! Yeah Caitlin! She did great (home pool advantage), and ate lots and lots of junk food and talked to her buddies - mostly Beth and Bridget.

A swim meet takes about 5 hours - just FYI.


She and Beth were quite pleased with themselves. They were even on the same relay team. (Cool!) Since I was manning the consession stand I sprung for 2 - 2$ snow cones! They swam hard - I was impressed, and of course this was the positive experience I'd been hoping for.










Go PENGUINS!

Sullivan

Sullivan our Golden Retriever died yesterday morning. We let him out at 6am, like any other day. I heard him barking and chasing the squirrels. Kevin was about to go off for his morning run, and noticed Sully laying in the sun alittle too peacefully. It was about 7am and he was just gone.
The girls got to say goodbye to him, pet him one last time, tell him what a good dog he was and how much we would miss him. Caitlin cried and cried. I told her that Sully's birthday was coming soon, so we could make a birthday cake for him.

We remembered when he ate 1/4 of Abi 's Pony birthday cake. They allowed as how he really liked that one, so maybe we should make just that kind. That cheered them up for a bit. (His birthday was really around March. When I got the new calendar I conveniently remembered that Sully's birthday was July 23rd because we have no birthdays in the summer!) Abi seems to still think that we took him to the doctors, and that they are going to wake him up and send him home. She hasn't quite gotten it yet.

Lilly is the most beside herself. The girls are just kind of moppie at this point, and I just come and go with the misty memories - but poor little Lilly is just out of sorts. She's acting like a completely different dog. Luckily we have some more summer to squeeze Lil and make her feel better.

We got Sullivan the year after we were married. So he was my best companion when I was home waiting for Caitlin to arrive. When Caitlin came along, he was an even better companion. I have tons of pictures of her pulling herself up using him. He took it all in stride, and rarely even moved away from her as his subtle form of protest. He was a sweetheart, and stayed puppy-ish for a long long time. Abi and Caity are probably such animal lovers because of his gentleness. They would dress up in the dog costumes and be his siblings; grab onto his tail and get pulled around the kitchen; ick - eat his dog food! OK, enough about that. He was truly one of the family.

He even put up with the addition of Lilith with style and grace.

Well Sully, you were a much loved dog! And I wish I could pat you on the head one more time and tell you what a good boy you were, and how much we miss you.

We hope you like chasing squirrels in doggie heaven.

"I'm - Too Sexy for the Sand Dunes"

I was guessing "Europeans" when I first got an eyeful, but turns out they were very nice chatty Americano's -

"and I wear my little speedo at the sand dunes, at the sand dunes".

And she had about as much business wearing a bikini as I do. . . but . . . they seemed to be enjoying themselves.



Some of those little dots are Caitlin and Kevin. I sat at the bottom with exhausted and crying Abigail. I don't know if it was because sound carried really far; you were privy to all sorts of conversations. There was alot of less than perfect parenting going on at the sand dunes. Myself included. Someone should rent wheel-barrels about half way out (for parents who's children have decided to go limp on them) - yeah.

It's one of those -
why is it fun? Because it feels so good when you stop
- things I think.

So we didn't hike as much as we thought we would because it rained alot. The tent and fluffy matresses did their job however, and we had a great time. 2 days in a tent is more than enough, the girls got themselves acclimated to the bugs fairly quickly.

Caitlin made a bbf of Iris, (they exchanged email addresses, too cute) from the site next door, it was very secluded with a stream running through it and deer! pictured here checking out our trash.


We met up with Doug and Annie - ooh, I should have a picture, or a link, or something here. . . oh well, can't find one. Met up with my old Lancaster U./ Boulder buddies Doug and Annie in Salida. It turns out that their house is about an hour away from our cotopaxi land - which could become very handy. Oh my gosh that sounded nice! The power of positive thinking. First time Kevin has seen it, and I'm working on drumming up enthusiasm for many trips to hike it, etc.

Bye bye Bambi.

Thanks for Noticing!

I was at the pool the other day, and a friend I hadn't seen in a while came over, we chatted, then she took her finger and poked my rather fleshy arm and said with a big old grin "you've put on some weight!" She and I share thyroid problems, although hers are of the dangerous variety, and she enjoys lamenting about her health problems a great deal. Anyhow, I shut her down and moved on. Thanks for noticing.

On a more positive note, I got to share some more details of my break up with psycho Amy (not to be confused with sister wife Aimee) with a long time peabody pal. We went to the Zoo with the kiddos. She was a receptive, untainted audience which was a relief. She commented that I always let Xpsychofriend use me like a security blanket; and that XPsycho responding with viciousness could not/should not be tolerated. As a form of therapy, I apologized loudly to the universe for my part in enabling Xpsycho's spreading her spew of hatred and poison - at which point my Peabody pal forgave me (on behalf of the universe) and confessed that she found Xpsycho to be pretty damn funny - when ripping other people - even when she knew she was very likely the next target the moment her back was turned.
Ah, I'm feeling better still.


I also got to see old friend Chelsea. She was in from Vermont. Again, refreshing to know someone who knows EVERYTHING about you, doesn't judge you, and is fun and inspiring to be with.
I believe that's known as a friend!
The more the merrier. Chelsea and I have very little outwardly in common these days - we completely differ in our ideas about alot of things, and yet can still share the gooey and crunchy stuff of life without batting an eye.
(She also brought me pure Grade A Amber maple syrup,
so you know she's a good egg.)

One question though.
Does this picture make it look like I weight 2 x Chelsea?

I only mention it because, well, I do. (Please don't follow along too closely with the math, but I actually weight 2 Chelseas, + another 14 pounds to boot!) No wonder I don't photograph as well.

I had a smallish group over for cwafy this morning. It was fun because it's basically a whole new crew! We then dispersed to our different quick moving summer activities. Hopefully I'll be able to go make a couple dozen Christmas cards at JK's tonight, and tomorrow we are off to TENT Camp at Crestone.
Southern Colorardo, in the Sangre de Cristos.
(Tracey, I figured out how to link! Can ya tell?)

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate. ~Henry David Thoreau

Now that's a better one. Have a great Monday.

07-07-07

That seems monumental, and not just in the "let's go buy a lottery ticket" way. 07-07-07


Quote me, per Martha C.'s blog challenge -
"Free your mind, your ass will follow" - Apocolypse now (movie). Oh, there are so many great ones out there that I've never been able to stick to one. However, this movie quote, is just about as good as it gets, so - there it is. What's the long one, god grant me the wisdom to change what I can and cope with what I can't, and the ability to know the difference? That one doesn't have a bad word in it; but, who originally said it? It's been adopted by many an organization.

Caitlins first swim meet. Should I blog about it, should I not?
She didn't have a good time. By now she has probably swum a few hundred laps during swim practice; but the pool was different, and the lane was different, and she barely made it across. (She kept stopping to grab the rope, and was crying, and it wasn't the positive experience it was supposed to be.) I was thinking that we should have taken more baby steps to get her over this hump, and it occured to me that I thought she was. Over the hump. Done with humps in general But she's not. And there will be many more humps to come. Maybe more for her than for the average kiddo. So it's ok to be my nervous nelly mom over it, because I could have quite easily sent her with a friend - not realizing that this was too much for her for some unseen - by everyone else including me - reason. Luckily, she has a good attitude about it, and we are going to go practice all the parts that she found scary. And hopefully I can convince her that she swims! This is that part, where I worry about changing schools. I know she needs more baby steps than most, - all kids have different humps - I know, I know.
NOW in honor of my - back/white, positive thinking is everything, believe whole heartedly in the theory of attraction - visiting friend Chelsea; we are off to concur the pool. Soon we will return victorious, and I can find something else to worry about. =?

Gone Camping. . . to be continued

Gone Camping. . . . More later!